Empire of the Sun
It is written by J.G .Ballard
Empire of the Sun was published in 1984, it quickly became a critical and commercial success. Many commentators regard it as one of the finest war novels ever written. In the novel, Ballard chronicles the semi-autobiographical experiences of an eleven-year-old British boy named Jim living in China during World War II.
When the fighting comes to Shanghai, Jim is separated from his parents and sent to a prison camp. It is there that he faces the harsh realities of war and learns important lessons about human nature. The novel has been praised for its vivid portrayal of the devastating effects of war and the psychology of survival as seen through the eyes of a young boy. In this moving coming-of-age tale, Jim lets go of his innocent ideas about war and heroism and in the process reveals the meaning of courage, tenacity, and faith in the endurance of the human spirit.
Plot Summary
Part I
The novel opens on the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, in Shanghai's International Settlement. Eleven-year-old Jamie — or Jim as he prefers to be called — his father and his mother live in a wealthy European area within the city.
With the threat of war, most of the European women and children have been evacuated to Hong Kong and Singapore. Jim's family remains. While riding his bicycle through the streets of Shanghai, he dreams of being a fighter pilot like the Japanese pilots that fly over the city.
On the morning of the 7th, Jim witnesses the Japanese attack on British and American warships docked at Shanghai (which occurred at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor), and in the ensuing turmoil he becomes separated from his parents.
After the attack, the Japanese intern the Europeans living in the city. For the next few months, Jim roams the city on his bicycle in constant search for food, shelter, and a recognizable face. Exhausted from long trips around the city and a lack of food, he decides to give himself up to the Japanese.
As he roams the city, Jim meets Frank and Basie, two American sailors. The three are soon captured and Basie and Jim are sent to a detention center. On arrival at the camp, Jim becomes seriously ill. With Basie's help, he learns how to get enough food to keep himself alive.
Part II
Jim and Basie are transported outside the city to the prison camp at Lunghua. During his three years there, Jim faces hunger, disease, and death. As the American bombing raids intensify, their meager rations are reduced.
Jim spends his time running errands for Basie, Dr. Ransome, and others. He tries to ingratiate himself with both prisoners and guards to gain company, food, and gifts, like a shiny pair of golf shoes. However, his boundless energy and unflagging determination to survive sometimes annoy the other prisoners.
He enjoys visiting the American prisoners, and reads copies of Reader's Digest and Popular Mechanics. He plays chess and does homework problems assigned by Dr. Ransome. Over time, he forgets what his parents looked like.
In August 1945, after American air attacks become a daily event, the Japanese evacuate the camp to the Olympic Stadium outside Shanghai. Jim finds it hard to leave the relative security of the camp. During the difficult journey there, many of the prisoners die. At one point, Jim becomes seduced by the idea of death, and decides to stop along the side of the road. Mr. Maxted, however, coaxes him on, insisting, "we need you to lead the way."
Mr. Maxted dies after they are herded inside the stadium. Jim acknowledges that "he had been trying to keep the war alive, and with it the security he had known in the camp. Now it was time to rid himself of Lunghua, and face up squarely to the present, however uncertain, the one rule that had sustained him through the years of the war."
Part III
That night the Japanese soldiers vanish and Jim sees a strange flash of light that floods the stadium. Later he is told the light came from the atomic bomb explosion at Nagasaki, reflected across the China Sea. Not knowing where to go, Jim decides to walk back to Lunghua.
As he walks back to Lunghua, American planes drop canisters of food and magazines that contain tales of the heroic exploits of the American soldiers. Jim devours the food and eagerly reads the magazines; the cans of Spam and candy bars make the "most satisfying" meal of his life. Back in the camp, unsure of what to do next, he notes that "peace had come, but it failed to fit properly." At times he is not sure that the war is really over.
Jim soon leaves with Lieutenant Price, an American who had taken control of Lunghua. Price, however makes a detour to the Olympic Stadium, hoping to steal some looted cars and furniture. After they arrive, a Chinese soldier shoots Price. As a threatening gang of bandits surrounds Jim, he recognizes Basie among them. After Basie and the gang strand him on a mud flat, he returns to the camp where he is reunited with Dr. Ransome.
Two months later Jim has been reunited with his parents and is preparing for his departure for England. As his parents slowly recover from their years at a prison camp in Soochow, Jim returns by bicycle to his old haunts in the city. He realizes that "only part of his mind would leave Shanghai. The rest would remain there forever, returning on the tide like the coffins launched from the funeral piers at Nantao."
Characters
Basie
Basie is an American sailor. Jim meets him before the two of them are sent to the prison camp and describes Basie as having a "bland, unmarked face from which all the copious experiences of his life had been cleverly erased." Basie is a player and tries to make money off of the war by trading anything he can. As a result, he acquires "a complete general store" at the camp.
Jim has ambivalent feelings about Basie, perceiving him as "a parasite" feeding "on the succulent terrain of the prison camps." Yet he is sometimes generous to Jim. For instance, he is the only one who gives him presents on his birthday. In addition, his confidence in the future is encouraging. However, when Jim runs into Basie and a group of bandits outside the stadium, he recognizes that "Basie had been prepared to see him die, and only Jim's lavish descriptions of the booty waiting for the bandits in the stadium sustained Basie's interest in Jim."
At the end of their relationship, Basie remains "the same small, finicky man ignoring everything but the shortest-term advantage. His one strength was that he never allowed himself to dream, because he had never been able to take anything for granted." That is why he survives so long, because the entire experience of the war had "barely touched" him.
Father
Jim's father, a serious man, tries to remain calm in the face of threats to his firm from the Communist Labor Unions, his concern for his work with the British Residents Association, and fears for Jim and his mother.
Frank
An American sailor Jim meets as he wanders around Shanghai looking for his parents, Frank introduces Jim to Basie.
Vera Frankel
Vera is Jim's nanny at Amherst Avenue, who usually follows Jim everywhere "like a guard dog." She is "a calm girl who never smiled and found everything strange about Jim and his parents." Her family fled Poland after Hitler's invasion. They now live with thousands of Jewish refugees in "a gloomy district of tenements and faded apartment blocks." The fact that she and her parents all live together in one room amazes and fascinates Jim.
Jim
The novel, opening from the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, focuses on the story of Jim, an eleven-year-old British boy who lives with his family in Shanghai. Before the Japanese take over Shanghai, Jim lives a comfortable life in the city's suburbs. He has seen some of the devastating results of the war, but seems to be detached from them. Completely absorbed in his own privileged world, he spends his days riding his bicycle around the city, dreaming of being a fighter pilot like the Japanese pilots he sees flying overhead. When he is separated from his parents after the Japanese take over the city, his world drastically changes.
At the detention center, Jim's bravery emerges as he learns important survival skills. On his way to the prison camp, Jim "already felt himself apart from the others, who had behaved as passively as the Chinese peasants. Jim realized that he was closer to the Japanese, who had seized Shanghai and sunk the American fleet at Pearl Harbor," pilots "ready to chance everything on little more than their own will." At this point, Jim retains his romantic dreams of heroism.
During his three years at the prison camp, Jim exhibits his strength, his curiosity, his energy, and his eagerness to please. Early on, he decides he won't allow himself to become too ill and so is able to perform countless errands for others. He enjoys the idea that his errands help keep the others alive. He works hard in order "to keep the camp going." Dr. Ransome often refers to him as a "free spirit" roving across the camp, "hunting down some new idea in his head."
He is curious about everything, including the war. He discovers what it takes to survive, learning how to get extra food and how to fight those who would try to take his rations. While trying to keep himself alive, he sometimes takes food meant for others and feels guilty, acknowledging that "parts of his mind and body frequently separated themselves from each other."
Jim's experiences in the camp change him from an innocent boy to an experienced man. He learns to accept the cruelty he sees around him and comes to understand the true horror of war. Yet he also learns that "having someone to care for was the same as being cared for by someone else."
Private Kimura
A Japanese guard at the camp who sometimes invites Jim into his bungalow and allows him to wear his armor.
Dr. Lockwood
Dr. Lockwood is the Vice-Chairman of the British Residents Association. He throws elaborate parties, including the "fancy-dress Christmas" party Jim and his family go to at the beginning of the novel.
Mr. Maxted
Mr. Maxted is the father of Jim's closest friend, Patrick. Jim admired this architect-turned-entrepreneur who had designed the Metropole Theater and numerous Shanghai nightclubs. He imagined himself growing up like Mr. Maxted, "the perfect type of the Englishman who had adapted himself to Shanghai, something that Jim's father, with his seriousness of mind, had never really done."
Mr. Maxted is also sent to Lunghua Camp where he helps distribute food to the prisoners. Jim runs errands for him in the camp and cares for him during the trek to the Olympic Stadium "out of nostalgia for his childhood dream of growing up one day to be like him." Mr. Maxted is also kind to Jim at the camp and encourages him to continue on the march when Jim is about to give in to death. Mr. Maxted dies soon after they get there.
Mother
Jim's mother is "a gentle and clever woman whose main purposes in life, he had decided, were to go to parties and help him with his Latin homework." After the war, when she and Jim's father return to Amherst Avenue, they take a long time to recover from their experience at the prison camp. When Jim is reunited with his parents, he decides they are too worn out from their own experiences in the camp to hear about his experiences.
Lieutenant Price
Price takes over Lunghua Camp after the Japanese leave. He shoots Private Kimura.
Dr. Ransome
When Jim first meets Dr. Ransome, the British doctor in the camp, Ransome is in his late twenties, with "the self-assured manner of the Royal Navy officers" Jim had seen at the parties. At first, Jim distrusts him and perceives Ransome as selfish and arrogant. On the way to the camp, Jim notices that the doctor is "less interested in the dying old people than he pretended."
In the camp, however, Jim's opinion of him changes. He still considers him selfish, but on oc-casion the doctor begins to reveal his generosity and spirit of self-sacrifice when he often gives Jim some of his own food. He also takes an interest in Jim's education, always coming up with homework problems for him to complete. Due to this kindness, Jim is determined to keep Dr. Ransome alive. While he shows obvious affection for Jim, he "resented [him] for revealing an obvious truth about the war, that people were only too able to adapt to it."
Mr. Tullock
Mr. Tullock is the chief mechanic at the Packard agency in Shanghai. He lets Jim come back into the camp and keeps him out of Price's way.
Mrs. Vincent
Jim shares a room at the camp with Mrs. Vincent, her husband, and their six-year-old son. She resents his presence and makes him feel unwelcome. In fact, she seems detached from everything around her, even her own son. Jim often has adolescent sexual fantasies about her. By the end of their stay at the camp, Jim grants her a certain respect, deciding she is "one of the few people in Lunghua Camp who appreciated the humor of it all." Mrs. Vincent dies in the march back from the stadium.
Yang
Yang is Jim's "fast-talking" chauffeur.
Themes
Coming of Age
The main focus of Empire of the Sun is Jim's maturation from child to man during World War II. After the war begins and he is separated from his parents, he spends the remainder of the book trying to reunite with them. He learns to survive the brutal conditions he faces in detention and prison camps. As a result of these experiences, he learns important lessons about himself and human nature.
Change and Transformation
As Ballard traces Jim's maturation, he explores the transformations he experiences. The biggest change occurs when Jim is wrenched from his comfortable, privileged life in Shanghai and forced to live, as do the Chinese, with deprivation and the constant threat of death. This experience brings Jim to new levels of self-discovery as he realizes his ingenuity, courage, and resilience in the face of tragedy.
Alienation and Loneliness
Jim must learn to cope with the alienation and loneliness that result when he is separated from his parents. As an only child, Jim had used his imagination to fill lonely days, envisioning himself as a Japanese fighter pilot. His imagination also helped Jim combat the loneliness he suffered after losing his parents.
While in camp, Jim tries to erase his sense of alienation through his interaction with the other prisoners. He considers the prisoners to be almost an extended family, and thus comes to feel a measure of safety while he is interned there. In this way, he tries to create order in a chaotic and dangerous world.
Strength and Weakness
Jim's ability to cope with his harsh surroundings reveals his strength of character and the nature of human adaptability. While others escape through death, Jim resolves to survive. In order to do this, he learns how to eat insects and to ingratiate himself with his captors.
Violence and Cruelty
Jim is able to recognize the capacity for violence and cruelty in others as well as himself. After seeing so much cruelty, Jim comes to understand its causes. For example, "Jim knew that Lieutenant Price would have liked to get him alone and then beat him to death, not because he was cruel, but because only the sight of Jim's agony would clear away all the pain that he himself had endured."
Jim often struggles with his own capacity for cruelty. In order to survive, he obtains extra food, which sometimes means less for others. He also learns how to defend himself against others trying to take food from him. As a result, "few boys of his own age dared to touch" him and "few men." Sometimes stealing food makes him feel guilty and he acknowledges that "parts of his mind and body frequently separated themselves from each other."
Appearances and Reality
By the end of the novel, Jim has let go of his innocent ideas about the nature of war. As a child, he had considered war to be "an heroic adventure filled with scenes of sacrifice and stoicism, of countless acts of bravery" like those detailed on the newsreels he watches and the magazines he reads. By the end of the novel, however, Jim recognizes the devastating reality of war.
Style
Point of View
One of the novel's most interesting and successful qualities is its use of point of view. The events unfold through the eyes of Jim, the protagonist, as he experiences the horrors of life in China during World War II. While providing a vivid depiction of the destruction that surrounds him, Jim remains the detached observer, a survival skill he learns at the prison camp. That same sense of detachment is evident in the novel's early scenes before Jim is separated from his parents.
While he enjoys the benefits of his upper class life in Shanghai, this lonely boy observes with an ironic eye the stark contrasts between European and Chinese life. He notes the "dances and garden parties, the countless bottles of scotch consumed in aid of the war effort" while beggars are whipped in the streets by limousine drivers. Jim sees that "all over the western suburbs people were wearing fancy dress, as if Shanghai had become a city of clowns."
Genre
Although this novel is concerned with the devastating impact of war, it does contain elements found in the science fiction genre. In their review published in Newsweek, David Lehman and Donna Foote maintain that the novel has "more in common with [Ballard's science fiction novels] than immediately meets the eye. Like its predecessors, the book explores the zone of 'inner space' that Ballard sees as 'the true domain of science fiction.'" John Gross echoes this assessment in his review for The New York Times, viewing many of its scenes "lurid and bizarre, so very nearly out of this world."
Symbol
In the novel, Ballard uses abandoned buildings and drained swimming pools as symbols of Jim's predicament and psychological state. As he searches for his parents in Shanghai, Jim comes across the abandoned homes and drained swimming pools, symbols of the privileged lives of the Europeans who once resided there. These empty images foreshadow the world Jim will face in the prison camp, a world where social hierarchies reverse and eventually collapse.
Empire of the Sun
is a 1987 English language film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Christian Bale, John Malkovich, and Miranda Richardson. It is based on the novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard; the film's screenplay being adapted by Tom Stoppard and Menno Meyjes. The film was critically acclaimed, being nominated for six Oscars and winning three BAFTAs (for Cinematography, Music and Sound).
Bale received a special citation for Best Performance by a Juvenile Actor from the National Board of Review — an award specially created for his performance in Empire of the Sun.
Plot summary
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Invasion
In Shanghai, China, 1941, on the eve of the Japanese invasion of the foreign quarters of Shanghai (the city itself fell in December 1937), a young boy, Jim “Jamie” Graham, lives a privileged life. His father is a rich British businessman who owns a large house on the outskirts of Shanghai. Jim attends an exclusive prep school where he sings lead in the choir and is generally sheltered from the Chinese culture and people that surround him daily. Jim is also rude to the servants his father employs in their house.
Jim, his mother and his father all attend a costume ball at the estate of friends. While playing with a toy glider, Jim, who is particularly fascinated with aircraft, encounters a unit of Japanese soldiers near the estate. Jim comments that the soldiers all appear to be “waiting for something to happen.”
The invasion of Shanghai occurs within a few days of the party, while Jim’s father has his family housed in a downtown hotel. The evacuation of the city begins immediately. Forced from their limousine, the Graham family find themselves crushed in amongst the crowds fleeing the Japanese Army. Jim and his mother are forcibly separated from his father and within moments Jim and his mother are forced apart by the crowds. His mother yells for him to run home as she is carried away.
Separated
Jim walks home and finds his house deserted. There is also a sign on the front door stating that the house is property of the Emperor of Japan. He also discovers signs of a struggle in his mother’s room. Jim also finds two of his parents' servants taking furniture from the house. Asking what they are doing, he is astonished when one of them does not answer but instead slaps him with impunity.
Jim lives in the house for an undetermined length of time, awaiting his parents' return. After what must be several days (indicated by the dropping level of water in the swimming pool) he ventures into Shanghai to find it occupied by the Japanese. Wishing to surrender to a group of soldiers for some food, he is laughed at. He is chased through the city’s back alleys by an orphaned Chinese boy trying to loot him for his clothes. As he tries to escape, he is nearly run over by a truck driven by an American, Frank. Frank takes Jim to his partner, Basie, a self-centered American hiding out in an abandoned freighter in the harbor. He deftly steals several of Jim’s personal belongings and assumes that the boy’s parents were captured with the other British who were unable to flee Shanghai. Basie gives Jim a new nickname, “Jim.”
Captured
Basie and Frank try to rid themselves of Jim, offering to sell him to a Chinese man who would use him for manual labor. When Basie and Frank decide to abandon Jim to the streets, Jim tells them that he’ll show them houses in his former neighborhood with the promise of “rich pickings.” They travel to Jim’s old house and are captured by the Japanese who are now living there. The trio are placed in a temporary detention center where living conditions are horrible. Food is scarce, the dead are rarely removed, and stealing is the only way to survive. After a few days, a selection takes place; those who are chosen will be sent to an internment camp outside Shanghai. Basie is selected but Jim is not. Jim pleads with Basie to take him along but Basie ignores him. Jim’s tenacity pays off; he is able to convince the Japanese sergeant and the truck driver, who are seen arguing over a map, that he knows the location of the camp. He is allowed to guide the driver to the Soochow Creek Internment Camp.
The passengers arrive at the Soochow Creek and are quickly put to work constructing a runway for the Japanese airforce. Jim wanders away from the group and finds several Japanese Zeros. Overcome by his lifelong dream to be a pilot, Jim touches one of the planes, and is quickly noticed by a Japanese guard. The soldier shouts at Jim in Japanese, and is about to shoot when three Japanese pilots approach and see Jim. He turns around and solemnly salutes them, after which they return the salute, saving him from the soldier.
The Closing Days of the War
The story then jumps ahead to 1945, a few months before the end of World War II. Jim is now about 13 or 14 years old and has eked out a good living, despite the poor conditions of the camp. He has an extensive trading network, involving even the camp’s commanding officer, Sergeant Nagata. He is being schooled by the camp’s British doctor, Dr. Rawlins, who has a difficult time teaching Jim humility. Rawlins has Jim help him with a dying patient; Jim administers CPR and the patient shows signs of life despite having obviously died. Jim is overly excited at his prowess and frantically continues CPR despite the patient’s passing.
Jim visits Basie daily in the American men’s section of the camp. The Americans have a broad appeal for Jim; their lifestyle is considerably more relaxed and obviously more fun than that of their dull British counterparts. Jim’s goal is to impress Basie enough so that he can move into the American men’s barracks.
Jim later rescues Dr. Rawlins from the wrath of Sgt. Nagata, who beats the doctor for defiance. As the doctor lies bleeding on the porch of the camp hospital, Jim delivers an obeisance and a humble speech to the sergeant, who stops the beating and storms off. As a reward, the doctor gives Jim a pair of cleats that belonged to a deceased patient.
"An American, now..."
Cover of first U.S. edition (hardcover, Simon & Schuster, 1984)
Jim gets his chance to impress Basie when Basie charges him with setting snare traps outside the wire of the camp to catch wild pheasants that Basie claims have been roosting there. Jim creeps into the marsh undetected, but the golf shoes he left behind are discovered by a Japanese guard, who tromps into the marsh to find the owner. Just as the guard is about to find Jim, he is distracted by a Japanese boy from the air base on the other side of the wire, whom Jim has “befriended” despite their separation. Jim is able to escape undetected, and for having set the pheasant traps is allowed to move into the American barracks next to Basie. He is also given Frank’s bed (despite Frank's objections).
Jim Falls out of Favor
In the meantime, Basie has been plotting to escape the camp. Though not explicitly revealed, Basie’s reason for sending Jim into the marsh was to test the area for mines. While they use a makeshift compass to plot direction, Nagata unexpectedly visits Basie’s corner of the barracks. He becomes enraged when he finds a bar of soap that was discreetly stolen by Jim earlier. He severely beats Basie, enough to send him to the infirmary. While being beaten, Basie had charged Jim with watching his possessions. Jim proves to be an inadequate protector and Basie’s things are stolen by the other men in his barracks. Jim leaves the American barracks in shame.
The Japanese Invasion
One morning at dawn, Jim witnesses a kamikaze ritual of three Japanese pilots at the air base. Overcome with emotion at the solemnity of the ceremony, he begins to sing the same Welsh hymn ("Suo Gân") he sang as a choir boy in the (Anglican) Cathedral School in Shanghai. As the pilots take off on their suicide mission, the base is attacked by a wing of P-51 Mustangs. Jim runs to the roof of a building and cheers them on. The base is heavily damaged in a matter of minutes, Dr Rawlins finds Jim on the roof and brings Jim back to reality by telling him “not to think so much.”
Evacuation
The Japanese decide to evacuate the camp. Jim returns excitedly to the American barracks to tell Basie and finds out his friend has already escaped. Jim is devastated that Basie would abandon him for another American prisoner, Dainty, especially when Basie led Jim to believe he'd take the boy with him.
The camp's population begins a gruelling march to Nantow where they are told there will be food. Many die along the way, including Mrs. Victor, a British woman who was Jim's "neighbour" at Suzhou. As Jim sits with her body among the war spoils stored in Nantow Stadium by the Japanese, Jim sees a bright light in the sky to the East. He believes it to be Mrs. Victor's soul floating to Heaven but finds out later, through a radio broadcast, that it was the flash from the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, hundreds of miles away.
Starving and weak, Jim trudges back to the camp at Soochow. Making his way through rice paddies, he notices cylindrical objects attached to parachutes falling from the sky. They contain Red Cross relief packages and food items. Jim fills a parachute with supplies and arrives at the camp. He finds the same young Japanese boy he knew from his internment angrily slashing at the plants in the marsh with his samurai sword (earlier, the boy, now a pilot, had failed to start his plane as Jim and the other prisoners were leaving the camp). The boy offers Jim a mango and begins to cut it with his sword. A moment later he is shot dead by one of Basie’s companions, who have rushed into the camp, looting supply canisters. Jim is furious and throws the man who shot his friend into the marsh and begins to punch him. Basie drags him off and promises to take him back to Shanghai and find his parents. Jim refuses the offer and stays behind.
The Reunion
Jim is found by a unit of American soldiers. He is sent back to Shanghai and housed with other children who have lost their parents. Jim is obviously more scarred by his experiences during the war than the other kids, so much so, that he doesn’t recognize his parents when they arrive at the home and they scarcely recognize him. The paralysis is broken when his mother finds him in the crowd. Jim collapses into his mother’s arms.
